A deeper look at an old topic

Some time when I was a child, I asked my mother if she loved her nails more than she loved me. She had this kit full of nail tools — clippers, files made of metal and emery, toe separators, fake nails separated in little boxes, even a small hand-held, battery-operated dremel with different attachments used to grind, sand, and polish — that she would carry with her around the house. When I asked her this question, she picked me up in her arms, and vehemently denied it. I didn’t believe her though, not in my heart. She had always paid more attention to her nails than to me.

My dad was no better. One time I googled his name to find his work number, and came across an audio/visual site where he had written a small paragraph as a review on a projector he had. I was crushed. It was more effort than he had ever put into my life, sitting in a couple of short sentences in front of me. It would have been okay if he had been so uninterested in everything, but he wasn’t. He loved his car, he loved his home theatre, he loved his karaoke, but me he had no interest in.

So, before I had become a teenager, I started to look for some kind of approval from other people. At that point, it was Andrew and Alex. They were my best friends in grade 3 and 4, but I changed schools in grade 5. Even after this, I tried to hang out with them but they seemed to be more interested in school, and we lost touch.

Pretty soon, I realized that I wasn’t anyone’s “best friend”. I cried and I cried and I cried. I felt like I needed this to define myself. I needed be a priority to someone because I certainly wasn’t a priority to my parents. Without being someone’s best friend, I was worthless.

As an adult, you may feel insecure about certain aspects of your life. You lack self-confidence in areas where you feel vulnerable — intimate relationships, social situations, or work. Within your vulnerable areas, you feel inferior to other people. You are hypersensitive to criticism or rejection.

I still feel this way now. The problem is that the need isn’t being met. Everyone puts other people first, and the one foundation I believed I had in my life has crumbled. I’m never important enough.

Two things keep me from killing myself.

The thought that one day, I may mean something to someone. Or the thought that one day, I’ll be able to stop defining myself through others, and simply be content with who I am.

Either way, something’s gotta give.

My therapist is on vacation now. When he gets back, I’ll start to see him on a bi-monthly instead of weekly basis. At first he suggested that we slow down only once I get a handle on my anxiety, but when I explained that the sessions were putting me in a negative cash-flow scenario, he understood and agreed¹.

• My depression is gone. Most likely, it was a side effect of my anxiety, or generalized anxiety disorder, which is mostly gone now.
  • The root of this is from my habit of predicting negative outcomes and asking too many “what ifs”, which I’m still learning to control.
• There’s this idea of learned helplessness that I struggle with. The bigger issue is that when I feel helpless, I get depressed as a result, about things out of my control such as the weather.
  • I love how the practical side of psychology falls in line with Taoism. In this case, I think of verse 29 of the Tao Te Ching:

    Allow your life to unfold naturally
    Know that it too is a vessel of perfection
    Just as you breathe in and out
    Sometimes you’re ahead and other times behind
    Sometimes you’re strong and other times weak
    Sometimes you’re with people and other times alone
    To the Sage all of life is a movement toward perfection

• One issue I had a hard time understanding was my belief that attempting something is a waste of time if I don’t succeed. I suppose that it seems rather silly now that I think about it (such as avoiding getting in a relationship just for the fact that one may get hurt), but I spent an entire session on this subject alone. It’s a problem because I give up on certain things before I try, and lose important opportunities as a result.
• I’m starting to become more aware of my automatic thought patterns. I’d automatically avoid certain situations because they would give me anxiety, or predict how other people would react based on past experiences, without even realizing it. This is wrong.
• I was a little skeptical about the usefulness of thought records at first, but now that I’ve finished about a half-dozen, I notice a change in my thought process. Every time I get flustered, I think in my head of what I’ll write down later (simply because I don’t have time to write it in the moment) and just doing this helps a great deal.
• My therapist is a fan of Chappelle’s Show (which is generally considered to be a low-class and crude form of humour), because it breaks social barriers by making fun of stereotypes, thereby robbing them of their significance. This makes him the coolest middle-aged white guy ever, and makes me want to smoke a spliff with him.
  • He also calls weed, “grass”, which is cute.

1. We’re both baffled by the fact that the sessions aren’t covered by OHIP, whereas physical health problems are. [↑]

My therapist is still getting to know me. Now I have books to read and worksheets to fill out. It’s somewhat strange; I’ve been putting myself through self-help for years, but I’ve never traced it so far back to my childhood. I don’t like to blame my parents because I see how Darren and Pat have survived far “worse” but it’s getting more and more obvious that there’s trauma in my childhood that still affects me to this day.

• Apparently, I’m moderately depressed, and “moderate” is not normal.
• We’ve figured out that my unassertiveness is the result of conflict avoidance. Even if I practice a situation in my head where I say something that may bring up conflict, I often can’t follow through. I feel helpless to fix this, and this leads to a self-defeating attitude.
  • This stems from my childhood. I’ve almost never argued with my parents (there were two times in my life I felt strongly enough to stand up against them, both ending in me submitting because there was no reasoning with them). I’ve always felt like I wouldn’t be loved unless I got good grades and did everything I was told. In other words, it was an extremely conditional love.
  • This means I care about what people think of me, and I define or evaluate my self-worth through them. Knowing this pisses me off because philosophically and pragmatically I don’t agree, but can’t do anything about it.
• Every time I’ve been in therapy, I’ve cried at least once. This happens whenever I bring up specific aspects of my relationship with my parents.
• Hearing my therapist say, “Wow, that’s bad” brings me a comforting validation to what I feel.
• Aside from being slightly verbose, my therapist is great. He’s a non-judgmental, ethical, open-minded intellectual. He’s also a good listener.

It’s a full seven days between sessions, and at this point, my pschologist is just starting to know me. In between, I can never stop reflecting. I’ve always believed that I know myself well, but these sessions are probing ideas and memories I haven’t thought of in a while, and opening up completely new areas of reflection.

And while I could write for days about these thoughts and epiphanies, I simply don’t have the time, so I figured I’d briefly touch on them in point form.

• I need to respect my psychologist in order to accept help from him. i.e. If he was a Freudian and I was a Jungian, I wouldn’t be able to agree with any of his methods.
• I get very anxious when I’m in his office. This is because I don’t like to admit to myself that something’s wrong with me, but when I’m in there, it’s a very tangible reminder that I have mental problems.
• I’m very conflicted on several issues.
  • I don’t want to lose my emotions because I need to suffer to create. Yet the emotions are bad enough that I don’t want to have them anymore (or have them in moderation at least).
  • I want to love and be in a relationship, and at the same time I cling to being single because I’m scared of being hurt (in addition to the fact that the freedom is intoxicating). I do this by pushing others away from me or cutting them off.
    • This stems from two significant childhood memories, where I felt betrayed in friendship, as well as my relationship with my parents.
  • I want to be settled and have some stability (in terms of schedule, relationships, finances etc.), but the struggle to be settled is what makes me grow and be stronger.
  • Many of these issues can only be resolved from decisions I should make. (i.e. No one else can make the decision for me)
  • Turning to Taoism, which is very paradoxical in itself, has only helped so much.
• Without my creativity, or my desire to express myself, I’m nothing.
• I don’t want to “blame” my parents for confidence problems or perfectionist tendencies, but I’m slowly starting to find out that they’ve affected me even more than I thought before.
• As a hedonist, my greatest fear is losing my joie de vivre. If this happened (and it has once), I would consider killing myself. This is because the joys of life balance out all the bad and makes it worth living.
• I’m dependent on other people for happiness. I don’t see my friends often enough for me to be satisfied, and it’s a simple fact of life. They all have significant others, and I’m the only one left single. I don’t blame them for not spending enough time with me, but it makes me very sad.

A reader sent me this letter (posted with her permission, of course):

Almost a year after I had managed to leave the island behind, the room, the floor, the sheets, the rape - I accidently ended up on your blog entry called “The beginning to the end” and it changed my world. It awoke feelings inside of me that I had for a years time tried to suppress and scare off so that I never again would open up to anyone, never trust anyone and therefor never end up in the same situation again. At that time, all men were a potential threath to me.

Reading and watching that very blogentry have had such a great impact on my life and will to become ‘myself’ again, to reclaim my body and to dare to move towards feeling and being ‘beautiful’ again. Your video granted me the sensation of how sincere, pure and giving love and affection truly are when it’s shared and not forced. It made me remember blocked out feelings and situations and it made me start to long for something that I had completely shut out for over a year.

I have been wanting to write you this email for quite some time, but I havent been sure of myself or if the “new” me (which is the old in fact) would survive and I didnt want to make this into a sunshine story if it really wasnt - but after many downhills, trials and tribulations, theraphy and social interaction, I am there, I am back and I am standing strong again. Nothing will ever be the same, but at least I made the right choice, for me. I have always been lifeloving in overload and even if I am only halfway there yet, it is still enough to keep me going.

I still watch that video every now and then, to remind myself that anything is possible and that you can recieve “help” from the most unexpected sources. It used to make me cry, now it makes me smile instead, isnt that beautiful? I know perfectly well that you never meant to post that entry for me, but it helped me in one of the most difficult times in my life and for that I will be forever grateful. Thank you.

Yours sincerly,
Emma

I’m at a loss for words.